10) Chukwuemeka Ike Vincent
Born: April 28, 1931 (age 84)
Native Land - Ndike Kingdom Anambra State, Nigeria.
Chukwuemeka Ike is one writer that has thrilled millions of Africans with his unique writing style which encompasses dialogue, wit, and satire, and employed to castigate corruption and the quest for inordinate powers by African leaders. Among
many youths, he is popular as the author of Expo '77, a critical look at academic examination abuses in West Africa.
As an educator, Ike has contributed to the intellectual and cultural development of Africa in important administrative positions at Nigerian universities and at UNESCO and as professor at the University of Jos. In 2008 he was awarded the Fonlon-Nichols Award at the African Literature Association meeting in Illinois.
Now at the ripe age of 82, the sun is still shining brightly on this doyen of African writing.
His works include:
Toads for Supper (1965), The Naked Gods (1970), The Potter's Wheel (1973), Sunset at Dawn (1976), Expo '77 (1980), The Chicken Chasers (1980), The Bottled Leopard (1985)
9) Cyprian Odiatu Duaka Ekwensi
(September 26, 1921- November 4, 2007)
Native Land- Minna, Northern Nigeria.
Cyprian Ekwensi's first novel, People of the City, published in 1954, appearing four years before Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, was the first Nigerian work to gain international acclaim and the first Nigerian novel to be published in Britain. Between stints as a teacher, forester, pharmacist, broadcaster and film-maker, the west African novelist Cyprian Ekwensi, who died aged 86, published more than 40 books as well as radio and television scripts. His most successful Jagua Nana (1961) won Ekwensi the 1968 Dag Hammarskjöld prize in literature. Jagua Nana (1961), about a Pidgin-speaking Nigerian woman who leaves her husband to work as a prostitute in a city and falls in love with a teacher. He also wrote a sequel to this, Jagua Nana's Daughter.
8) Emmanuel Gladstone Olawale Rotimi (a.k.a Ola Rotimi)
(April 13, 1938 - August 18, 2000)
Native Land - Sapele, Delta State, Nigeria.
The dramatic works of Ola Rotimi are known throughout Africa and have made him one of the most significant playwrights in this continent. He was a playwright, theatre director and teacher. His dramatic works have been performed in Europe and Africa and are the focus of study in Europe and in American universities with African studies programs. An accomplished play director, Rotimi has taken many works directly to the people with the University of Ife Theatre, a repertory company that performs works in the Yoruba language, Nigerian pidgin, and English.
The first major play Rotimi created in Ife was The Gods Are Not to Blame (1968), a reworking of Oedipus Rex. "Nigeria was in the throes of a civil war flared by ethnic distrust, the bane of all Africa," Rotimi recalled. "A shattering tragedy like Oedipus's calamity should bring out the warning against this cancerous foible, I thought."
His Selected works include;
The Gods Are Not to Blame, (1971),Ovoranwen Nogbaisi: An Historical Tragedy, (1974).Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, (1977), If…, (1983), Everyone His/Her Own Problems, 1986, Hopes of the Living Dead, 1988,Kurunmi, 1989. (From Encyclopedia)
7) Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta
(July 21, 1944 - till present)
Many say that Buchi Emecheta is to date the most important female African writer. She is certainly Nigeria’s best known woman writer, and is respected for her imaginative and documentary writing about African women’s experiences in Africa and in Great Britain. Her best-known novels, including Second-Class Citizen(1974), The Bride Price (1976), and The Joys of Motherhood (1979), expose the injustice of traditional, male-oriented African social customs that relegate women to a life of child-bearing, servitude, and victimization. Often regarded as a feminist writer, Emecheta illustrates the value of education and self-determination for aspiring young women who struggle against sexual discrimination, racism, and unhappy marital arrangements to achieve individuality and independence.
“The joy of being a mother was the joy of giving all to your children”. In The Joys of Motherhood,
6) Ben Okri
(Born in 1959 - till present)
Native Land - Minna, Northern Nigeria, to an Igbo mother and Urhobo father.
In his book A Time for New Dreams (2011), Ben Okri describes poetry as ‘the great river of soul-murmurings that runs within humanity’, and true literature as ‘the encounter of possibilities’ that ‘tears up the script of what we think humanity to be’.
His accomplishments include;
(2001) OBE
(2000) Premio Palmi (Italy), Dangerous Love1995Crystal Award (World Economic Forum)
(1994) Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy), The Famished Road
(1993) Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize, The Famished Road
(1991) Booker Prize for Fiction, The Famished Road1988Guardian Fiction Prize, Stars of the New Curfew, shortlist
(1987) Paris Review/Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, Incidents at the Shrine
His latest novels are In Arcadia (2002) and Starbook (2007).
Ben Okri is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN, a member of the board of the Royal National Theatre, and was awarded an OBE in 2001. He lives in London.
5) Amos Tutola
(June 20, 1920 - June 8, 1997).
Amos was a Nigerian writer famous for his books based in part on Yoruba folk-tales. When Amos Tutuola's first novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, appeared in 1952, it aroused exceptional worldwide interest. Drawing on the West African (Nigeria) Yoruba oral folktale tradition, Tutuola described the odyssey of a devotedine drinker through a nightmare of fantastic adventure. Tutuola became also one of the founders of Mbari Club, the writers' and publishers' organization. In 1979, he held a visiting research fellowship at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) at Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and in 1983 he was an associate of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. In retirement he divided his time between residences at Ibadan and Ago-Odo. Tutuola died at age 77 on June 8, 1997 from hypertension and diabetes. Tutuola’s first novel is essentially the grand global debut of what we now call “the African novel.”
4) Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa. (a.k.a Flora Nwapa)
Born: January 13, 1931, Oguta
Died: October 16, 1993, Enugu
Nwapa, born in Oguta, was the forerunner to a generation of African women writers. While never considering herself a feminist, she is best known for recreating life and traditions from a woman's viewpoint. In 1966 her book Efuru became Africa's first internationally published female novel in the English language (Heinemann Educational Books). She has been called the mother of modern African literature. Later she went on to become the first African woman publisher of novels when she founded Tata Press.
She also is known for her governmental work in reconstruction after the Biafran War.
In 1985, she received the Merit Award for Authorship and Publishing at the Ife Book Fair of the University of Ife now Obafemi Awolowo University. She also received a Certificate of Participation, Iowa University School of Letters International Writing Programme in 1984. -
In 1985, she received the Merit Award for Authorship and Publishing at the Ife Book Fair of the University of Ife now Obafemi Awolowo University. She also received a Certificate of Participation, Iowa University School of Letters International Writing Programme in 1984. -
At her funeral, the late environmentalist, writer and activist, Kenule Saro-Wiwa, said of her, “Flora is gone and we all have to say adieu. But she left behind an indelible mark. No one will ever write about Nigerian literature in English without mentioning her. She will always be the departure point for female writing in Africa. And African publishing will forever owe her a debt. But above all, her contribution to the development of women in Nigeria, nay in Africa, and throughout the world is what she will be best remembered for.”
3) J.P Clark
Born: April 6, 1935 (age 80)
Native Land - Kiagbodo, Nigeria.
John Pepper Clark Bekederemo is one of Nigeria's foremost anglophone dramatists and poets. Born in Kiagbodo, Nigeria, to Ijaw parents is along with Wole Soyinka one of the most articulate, and proficient literary artists to have come from Africa.
Clark is most noted for his poetry, including:
Poems Mbari (1961), A Reed in the Tide (Longmans, 1965), Casualties: Poems 1966-68 Decade of Tongue(1981), a collection of seventy-four poems, all of which apart from “Epilogue to Casualties” (dedicated to Michael Echeruo) were previously published in earlier volumes.
A widely travelled man, Clark has, since his retirement, continued to play an active role in literary affairs, a role for which he is increasingly gaining international recognition receiving in 1991 the Nigerian National Merit Award for literary excellence and the publication, by Howard University of his two definitive volumes, The Ozidi Saga and Collected Plays and Poems,1958-1988.
2) Akonwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka
(13 July 1934 - till present)
Native Land - Abeokuta, near Ibadan in Western Nigeria Soyinka has produced a large body of work which includes plays, poetry, novels, autobiographies, literary criticism, and social criticism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, the first black African to be given the honor. Soyinka’s writing often focuses on oppression and exploitation of the weak by the strong; none are spared in his critique, neither the white speculator nor the black exploiter. Wole Soyinka has also played an important role in Nigerian politics, which has at times exposed him to great personal risk. The government of General Sani Abacha (1993–1998), for instance, pronounced a death sentence on him ‘in absentia’. He wrote his first plays during his time in London,The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel (a light comedy), which were performed at Ibadan in 1958 and 1959 and were published in 1963. Later, satirical comedies are The Trials of Brother Jero (performed in 1960, publ. 1963) with its sequel, Jero's Metamorphosis (performed 1974, publ. 1973), Among Soyinka's serious philosophic plays are (apart from "The Swamp Dwellers") The Strong Breed(performed 1966, publ. 1963), The Road ( 1965) and Death and the King's Horseman (performed 1976, publ. 1975). -
1) Albert Chinualumogu Achebe
(November 16,1930-March 21, 2013)
Native Land - Ogidi, Nigeria.
A poet, novelist, professor and critic. He is best known for his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), which is the most widely read book in modern African literature. He was also considered by many to be one of the most original literary artists writing in English during his lifetime. Things Fall Apart (1958) has been translated into at least forty-five languages, and has sold eight million copies worldwide. Other novels include: No Longer At Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), and A Man of the People (1966).
Though he has often been called ‘The Father of Nigerian Literature’, he twice refused the Nigerian government’s attempt to name him Commander of the Federal Republic – first in 2004, then again in 2011 – in protest against the political regime of the country. He served as the professor of David and Mariana Fisher University as well as the professor of African Studies at the Brown University in the Providence Rhode Island. He died early 2013 at the age of 82 years old, in Boston, Massachusetts.
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